


Runner of the Desert

by LotusLeaf



Category: Welcome to Night Vale, Zombies Run!
Genre: M/M, Non-Binary Runner Five, Nonbinary Character, Other, because im nonbinary and i said so, gee five how come you get to have so many parents, my five is from night vale
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:53:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22345153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LotusLeaf/pseuds/LotusLeaf
Summary: This is the story of an interesting individual who grew up in Nightvale before leaving to explore the world outside. Upon leaving their strange little town they wind up in another strange little town, this one by the name of Abel. Join this Runner Five and their journey through life.
Relationships: Carlos/Cecil Palmer, Runner Five & Sam Yao, Runner Five & Sara Smith, Runner Five/Sam Yao
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	1. Origin Story

They grew up in a vast desert.

Vast and flat, but without a horizon. Where a horizon should have been there were distant, hazy, huge mountains. The awesome size of these mountains made them always seem close, but no amount of traveling toward them could ever make them closer.

They had no name at first. They were simply a scared child lost in a desert. A desert filled with nothing. But also filled with masked warriors. The masked warriors that never paid any mind to the child, too busy fighting each other to notice a singular small unmasked human that also inhabited the desert with them.

One day another unmasked human entered the desert. But the desert was so expansive that this new human and the child never crossed paths. They were flowing through two separate streams of destiny. They would never interact face to face.

The child that grew up in this strange desert world with no name and no memories of a world other than the one filled with sand and brush and cacti awoke one evening to the sight of a distant red blinking light on top of a mountain.

They pushed themself up onto their hands and knees, and then stood, brushing their hands together to dislodge small bits of grainy sand and pebbles from their palms, and then leant down to do the same to their knees. Their bare feet stepped forward through the sand and grit confidently, carefully avoiding any biting ants, scorpions or cacti that might not take to kindly to being trod on. A lifetime spent traversing this terrain had honed their desert walking skills into an art.

Though they hadn't quite realized it yet, they were heading toward the red blinking light on the mountain. Every creature in the desert was heading toward the red blinking light on the mountain. None of them knew why. They walked forwards anyways.

For the first time in their life they made it to the base of a mountain. They began to climb. Ascending the mountain felt so easy, like they were made to do this. In no time they had reached the top, and they were released from the thrall of the red blinking light.

The exhaustion from a trek across the desert and a climb up a mountain finally registered, and they sagged as if a heavy weight had suddenly been placed on their shoulders, a trembling tiredness settling deep in their bones.

They turned to look down at the endless desert from their view up on the mountain. What they saw was every single masked army walking steadily toward the mountain with the red blinking light as well.

A surge of panic rushed through the child

The mountain was completely surrounded by the masked armies, called by the blinking red light just as the child had been.

The first of them were starting to climb up.

The child had nowhere to go, so they stood there, heartbeat racing and breathing irregular.

Soon enough the masked armies had reached the top as well, and crowded around the child, waiting expectantly for something.

The child was filled with the need to escape. They closed their eyes and flailed their arms wildly until they hit something solid. They slowly opened their eyes to see what their hands were pushing up against, only to see nothing there. They were leaning up against thin air as if there was some sort of invisible wall. Their panic increased and they shoved against the wall with all their strength.

Something gave and they fell through.

They tumbled onto the ground, instinctively curling into a ball as the masked armies started to move, stepping over them and continuing back down the mountain and back into the desert.

The child looked up to watch them go, only to notice that the desert was…. Different. It was, fuller, more vibrant, and past the floodplain filled with bones was a town.

They carefully picked themself up and followed the masked armies heading straight toward the town.

They entered the town unnoticed, everyone too concerned with the armies that turned out to just be passing through.

And so the child had entered a town by the name of Nightvale.

They had never been in a town before, or met regular people, so they simply loitered around various places, eating scraps of food people discarded.

They were sitting outside someone's window one day listening to the radio they had playing inside when a girl approached them. She was short, about the same height as the child even though she appeared to be significantly older. She had dark skin and darker hair and for a while she simply stood there looking at the child with curiosity, her head tilted to the side and a book held loosely in her grip.

Finally she spoke up.

“Who are you?”

The child had no idea what was being said, but the book the girl was holding had caught their interest. They pointed to it.

The girl held up the book and glanced at the title. It was a cookbook specifically focusing on the many uses of coriander.

“Is your name Coriander?” She asked sceptically.

The child made grabby hands at the book. The girl sighed and handed it over, the book quickly snatched away by the child who proceeded to inspect all of the pictures within it.

“Alright Coriander. My name is Tamika. Do you have a family?” Tamika crouched down next to the child, who looked up, and then pointed to the radio.

Tamika wondered what this strange kid could mean by that. The radio was just transmitting Cecil's daily broadcast.

Wait.

“Do you know Cecil?” She asked.

The only response she got was a vacant stare.

Good enough.

Cecil had never seen this child before in his life, but he was enamored.

“Awwww, just look at the way they climb on all the furniture knocking stuff over, how adorable!”

“Cecil you do realize this is a human child and not a cat”

“I bet I can teach them tricks, like how to sit and fetch!”

Tamika rubbed her hand across her face and let out a long sigh. Whatever. This crazy feral child was his problem now.

“OK well, their name is Coriander I think, and uhhh, have fun” Tamika said before leaving, hearing Cecil gushing about having a new pet right before she shut the door and headed back to the library.


	2. Just your average day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New universe who dis

Coriander was a unique child with a unique childhood, but this was the case for most everyone in nightvale so they fit right in.

Growing up alone in a desert otherworld for ten years did not make for a very well rounded or developed brain, and they mostly behaved like a half starved coyote. Thankfully Cecil turned out to be very good at caring for feral animals. Eventually once he figured out that Coriander was not, in fact, a weird looking desert animal, he proved to be equally good at caring for feral children.

When Carlos finally returned from the same desert otherworld that Coriander hailed from, they made for an interesting little family. Though since Carlos and Cecil often had their schedules filled with both work and whatever weekly problem Nightvale threw their way, Coriander was often put in the care of a babysitter, a young man around five years older than Coriander themself who desperately wanted to get a job at the radio station, and was more than happy to watch the kid if it meant being able to talk to Cecil.

And so Coriander grew up. Their hair grew out of the buzzcut they had given Coriander from when they first emerged from the other dimension with a head full of matted tangled hair they had no choice but to hack off. They liked to keep it at about shoulder length, and often held back the light brown curls with a bandana. 

Teaching them language had taken some time, for a couple years they could only seem to pick up sign language, but eventually they figured out verbal speech as well. Their voice sounded like they always needed a drink of water, the desert seeming to stick with them permanently in the form of a slightly raspy sounding voice.

But by far the weirdest part of Coriander was their ability to open doors through space. This ability was what had landed them in Nightvale in the first place, and though they weren't one hundred percent sure how it worked or how to do it on demand, it did make for a neat way to leave places or situations. Of course their babysitter had never appreciated it when the child he was supposed to be watching would vanish from right in front of him only to reappear all the way across town.

This power of theirs was of course, the reason they were in their current predicament. Coriander had lived in Nightvale for around eleven years now, give or take a few because who even knew how time worked or how to keep track of it, and was used to strange things happening. They were also used to Carlos roping them into investigating said strange things. He had pulled them out of bed early this morning, telling them to dress for a hike and quickly handing them a handheld radio hooked up to a headset and some sort of strange scanning device. Corianders job was to go out into the desert brushlands, about 2 miles outside of nightvale, and investigate close up the source of a strange reading one of Carlos’s many strange contraptions had picked up. They didn't hear much of the specifics of the strange signal or the device they were now holding, their brain still too foggy and tired to pick up all of the science mumbo jumbo, but they got the basic idea of what they needed to do. Wander around with the device, look for anything weird, report back to Carlos via the radio. Simple enough.

And thus an hour later they found themself being chased through the desert by a half rotted corpse.

Carlos was too busy geeking out over a “new lifeform” and “readings just like the house that didn't exist” to be any help to Coriander at the moment. So they ran. And in their head they held the intent of escape. This singular thought began to block out any other thoughts or ideas, filling their mind so completely they even stopped noticing their own ragged breathing and faltering footsteps. They were oblivious to everything else but escape, until their whole body slammed into something solid and hard. Sitting on the ground, looking forward at an invisible wall, they knew exactly what was going on. There, in front of them, was a door waiting to be opened. So they stood and they pushed, the door through space opening much easier for Coriander than the first time they had opened this type of door, when they were young and had never used this power before pushing through took a lot of effort. But now they slid through almost effortlessly, landing gracefully on the other side in a helicopter seat. Their first thought was that they had somehow teleported onto a secret police helicopter, it wouldn't have been the first time, but that thought was quickly put to the side when the weird shambling creature came through the door as well. Coriander cursed under their breath. They always forgot that the doors sometimes stayed open for a little bit. Thankfully the rotting corpse was no longer targeting Coriander, but the pilot of the helicopter. The pilot that had no idea either Coriander or the strange creature were on the helicopter yet. The helicopter that was currently very, very high up in the air. Coriander bolted upright, a warning shout just leaving their mouth when the shambling thing bit the pilot. Its teeth sunk deep into the poor man's throat. He made a surprised gurgling sound, before slumping over dead. All of three seconds afterward the helicopter started spiraling out of control.

Coriander tried to keep calm. They were taught how to deal with situations like this in school. Step one was always keep calm. Step two was to send a quick prayer to the god that lived under their bed. Step three was the most important one, though. They closed their eyes and tried to remember what their teacher had taught them to do in an emergency situation. Oh yea, now they remembered, their teacher had always said that for step three you should use whatever heavy scientific device you might have in your hand to hit away whatever strange monster might be near, and then to unfasten the dead pilots parachute, take it off of his corpse and then fasten it around yourself before jumping out of the falling helicopter. This was basic stuff that should not have taken Coriander that long to remember.

After successfully following steps one through three of surviving and emergency situations, Coriander managed to land safely, if not a bit roughly, on the ground and take off the parachute.

Standing up and brushing themself off they took inventory. A few scrapes, though nothing bleeding too much, no more strange science device, though they doubted Carlos would be too mad about that. He had a million strange science devices, he wouldn't even miss the one Coriander used to fend off a weird monster. That just left the radio and headset.

It seemed to be working still, judging from the distorted audio coming through. They turned the little knob on the radio, hoping to pick up the signal up better. It was probably Carlos wondering what the heck was going on. As they turned the knob the signal became clearer and they picked up a voice that was certainly not Carlos.

The person was telling Coriander to run toward a tower, yelling something about zombies being attracted to the crash. They caught that his name was Sam Yao and that he was a radio operator. 

If Coriander had learned one thing from nightvale it was that radio operators were cool and trustworthy, so they did what any good nightvale citizen would do and blindly did what the voice on the radio told them to.

What was the worst that could happen?


End file.
